Friday 30 September 2016

Herding angels

Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov, Angel with a Lamp, c. 1885-1896
This is a roundup of what's been going on with The Book of the Watchers trilogy, for those of you who have not been following my Facebook mutterings like they are Holy Writ.

Book 2 (previously known as The Valleys of the Earth) is finished (it came to 86.5K words), edited, and sitting on the desk of a publisher who has expressed keen interest. I'm not going to say anything more until such point as we have signed a contract, but fingers crossed!

At 2a.m. the night before I sent it off, I decided to change the titles of both Book 2 and Book 3. I'm waiting for feedback from the publisher on the first of those.

Book 3 is now definitely going to be called The Prison of the Angels instead of the possibly-misleading The Treasuries of the Stars. All titles are quotes from psychedelic best-seller The Book of Enoch.

I have started writing Book 3!  Yes, I was planning to take some time off and do something fun like my tax-return, but the angsty sex-scenes for Book 3 are making such a commotion inside my skull that the only way to save my sanity is to get them out on paper.

Today this was part of my research:



I'm sure you'll agree it has potential for a smoking-hot sex scene... lol

Wednesday 28 September 2016

Terry the Tentacle's report from FantasyCon by the Sea

 Hello, my name is Terry the Tentacle!

Am I not gloriously squamous and rugose?

I like to hang out with Janine Ashbless for fun, good times and strangling people :-)


This weekend just past we went to Scarborough, to FantasyCon by the Sea 2016. Scarborough is just my sort of place: full of the decaying remnants of ancient civilisations, and the smell of fish.


I didn't like the locals though... This guy looked hungry.


FantasyCon was hosted in an eldritch pile built by hands perhaps not fully human:




Janine was there under her SUPER SECRET NAME because she was launching her new collection of horror stories. Here she is with other minor contributor Adrian Tchaikovsky, and me (obviously I'm the most important one):


I understand that the most important part of any book launch is the free wine. In fact if you can go to enough book launches in an afternoon, you can end up quite sloshed! Or so I'm told...

Here I am strangling Peter Coleborn, publisher at The Alchemy Press:


And here I am strangling Simon Bestwick, author of Hell's Ditch:



Ah, good times :-)

This is famous horror author Adam Nevill, talking about his years at Nexus / Black Lace when he was Janine's editor, the lucky lucky man.

85 books a year, 60-hour working weeks, no budget

I didn't get to strangle him :-(

This is Janine standing with a bunch of other writers, in fact between this year's ARTHUR C CLARKE AWARD WINNER and this year's COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR PRIZE WINNER. She is feeling a teeny tiny bit inadequate. And short.

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Janine, Francis Hardinge, Charlotte Bond, Andrew Knighton

I did offer to strangle them ALL but she said No. I don't know why ... she's a bit weird like that.



I had a great weekend, but it's nice to get home and unwind :-)

Monday 26 September 2016

Blue Monday: Jay Willowbay guests

Every Monday I post a wicked excerpt for your entertainment!

Today's guest, Jay Willowbay, brings us something new for this blogspot - an entire short story: Massaging the Mistress.



I walk in to find you naked, lying on your front. Needless to say, I’m naked too, as I have always been in your presence since you claimed me. I harden instantly, and enjoy an all too brief moment of drinking in your beautiful body, memorising every curve before you issue your command.

“I need to relax,” you say, “relax me, slave.”

Distracted by the exquisite vision before me, it takes me a little while to realise that you want, no, demand a massage. You don’t like to be kept waiting, and tut at me. It shakes me from my dreamlike reverie, and I fear that you will remember this mistake and punish me for it. Not the spanking or pegging ‘punishments’ that you know I crave, but the far worse censure of denial, or exclusion, or being ignored. But I push that thought out of my head: right now I have a chance to touch you, to feel you, and I hope, impress you enough not to banish me.

I place my hands on the small of your back, and gasp my appreciation at the divine softness of your skin. I start to knead my palms into your yielding flesh there, but my eyes are fixed just below, on the luscious curves and contours of your bare ass. I see movement there, twerking – for me! – and lose myself in that hypnotic rhythm before resuming the task in hand. Even I couldn’t miss that hint. 

So I cup that ripe, juicy peach, one smooth, soft cheek in each grateful hand, and resume that kneading motion. I push the cheeks together and pull them apart, all the while working in each finger, and probing with my thumbs. I see the bottle of baby oil you’ve laid out alongside you; it’s new and completely full, so I don’t need to be sparing with it.

I raise it high to tip it over above you, so the oil cascades down and splashes on your bare exposed backside, and from the way you writhe and moan under the stream, it’s clearly a pleasurable sensation. I rub it in, working it with my fingers, while the thumbs one by one, accidentally on purpose, just push a little teasing way into your asshole. You moan again, and this time gasp my name. Not my title, not ‘slave’, but my actual name. My cock, already achingly hard, bobs wildly in appreciation, and my helmet pulsates wishfully.

I reluctantly move my oily hands from your butt, but I have a plan in mind. I drizzle a long, thick line from your butt crack all the way up to the back of your neck, and then slowly follow it up with my hands, rubbing the oil around, into your skin, relaxing the muscles.

By the time I reach your shoulders I am leaning over you at such an angle that my chest has picked up a slick sheen of the oil, the wisps of hair flattened down to glide smoothly over your back. Down below, my cock is also glistening with oil, and perhaps a little pre-cum where it’s been rubbing teasingly over your butt cheeks. Oh god, I can’t take it anymore, I need you so fucking much!

I’m taking such a risk that I’m trembling with fear as much as desire, but I’m too lost in you to stop myself. I hold the throbbing head of my cock against your hole and push; gently, but enough to make my intentions perfectly clear. I expect a furious reaction, but instead you moan lightly and push back against me and I am in.

It feels like I am home, that I’ve finally found the place I truly belong. I start to push, so very gently, tentatively. “Don’t fucking tease me, slave,” you say, “And don’t start something you can’t finish.”
Responding to your words, I push again, working up a good rhythm; harder, faster, thrusting from my hips and muscular thighs and reaching deep inside you.

“Ohhhh, fuck, that’s good,” you purr, “But don’t you dare cum until I have!”

I try to reply that I promise I won’t, but all that comes out is a frantic, garbled gasp. I so desperately want to cum, and you know it so well. You must want an excuse to punish me, because you start to work and twerk at me, your ass gripping and releasing, teasing me in a way that takes me right to the edge in seconds. And then you tell me how much I love this, and how badly I ache and yearn to shoot my load. I already know this, but you telling me so brings it even closer.

This is the sweetest, most exquisite, most agonising torture I have ever known. But I push back harder and faster, racing to the line and trying so hard to take you with me. And I know I’ve found somewhere in you that really works, because your tormenting words have given way to a succession of short, fast panting, and I know you’re close.

But oh fuck, so am I. Every fibre of my being wants to propel my seed into you, to give myself to you even more completely than I already have. But I fight it, oh so hard, for now at least. Every muscle in my body is tensed, teeth grinding, eyes bulging. A shudder sets in and wracks through my whole body, and you feel it too. Only knowing how close you are gives me the determination not to give into the feeling just yet.

I push and push, on and on. I close my eyes and see swirls and colours in my mind, and your moans and gasps of pleasure are the sweetest music I have ever heard. “Ohh,” you murmur, “Oh fuck I’m gonna cum!”

Your volume increases, I luxuriate in in it. “Oh yeah, slave! Oh shit … oh … oh fuck, so close! Oh! Yes! Now, slave! Cum for me, cum, cum!”

You don’t need to tell me three times. I give into that carnal need, that ultimate desire, with a release I feel throughout my entire body. All that I am is here to pump into you, reaching so deep within to fill you up as we both soar on the ecstatic wave of mutual orgasm, and ride the ripples of continuing after-pleasure, before we both sink back, sated and soaked, into your luxurious feather bed.

I lay a gentle kiss on your neck. “Thank you Mistress – are you relaxed enough now?”



Jay Willowbay is an erotic author and occasional poet, writing mostly, but not entirely, in female domination /
male submission. 

His debut novella Shagnasty is due for release this autumn, he is a newly appointed resident reviewer for BDSM Book Reviews  and he blogs too infrequently at https://jaywillowbay.wordpress.com/


Jay on Facebook 

Thursday 22 September 2016

Book launch this weekend!

cover art by Christopher Shy

From the wastes of the sea to the shadows of our own cities, we are not alone. But what happens where the human world touches the domain of races ancient and alien? Museum curators, surveyors, police officers, archaeologists, mathematicians; from derelict buildings to country houses to the London Underground, another world is just a breath away, around the corner, watching and waiting for you to step into its power. The Private Life of Elder Things is a collection of new Lovecraftian fiction about confronting, discovering and living alongside the creatures of the Mythos.

Well, I don't usually bang on much on this blog about my Secret Other Life as a horror writer, but this is an exception. At noon on Saturday, at Fantasycon UK in Scarborough, we are launching a collaborative anthology from The Alchemy Press which features Lovecraftian Mythos tales by myself, Arthur C Clarke Award-winning SF/F author Adrian Tchaikovsky, and veteran Pelgrane Press gaming-writer Adam Gauntlett.
 
Not a sanity point left between us
For those of you coming to Scarborough, Adrian and I will be there signing copies and looking into the void of madness that awaits all who delve too deeply into the occult mysteries. I'll be the one without the beard, and Adam will be the one still at home in Bermuda drinking rum swizzles.

Scarborough, not Bermuda


I have three chunky stories in the collection :

The Play's the Thing - a period King in Yellow creeper about a huge house that doesn't obey the laws of physics, and the agent sent to track down its missing rooms before reality collapses entirely.

Devo Nodenti -  a Dreamlands story about an aged ex-archeologist with a guilty secret and a very uncanny housepet.

Special Needs Child - which is about an adopted ghoul child, and just happens to contain the most morally repugnant sex scene I have ever written. Which is going some, I'm sure you'll agree!

I'm really proud of this collection, which the Rising Shadow reviewer says:

 "…belongs to the bookshelf of everyone who is fascinated by Lovecraftian weird fiction. It’s one of the best weird fiction collections of the year and deserves to be read by ardent and enthusiastic fans of the genre. Weird fiction doesn’t get more entertaining than this, so please invest a bit of time into reading this marvellous collection. Highly recommended!"

So come and see us! There will be WINE! (And I'll answer to "Janine" too.)



You can already buy The Private Life of Elder Things at:
Amazon UK - Kindle and paperback
Amazon US - Kindle and paperback

Monday 19 September 2016

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a wicked excerpt for your entertainment!

The nights are drawing in so I'm posting excerpts from my creepy, cruel erotic horror novel, Red Grow the Roses in the run-up to Hallowe'en. Vampires are the stars of each of the 11 short stories that make up this mosaic novel.

This story,  Nine for the Nine Bright Shiners, is told by a man who is desperately trying to help his wife conceive, whilst being horribly distracted by a vampire that appears out of mirrors...



I step out of the bath and towel myself down as the water drains. Somehow I manage to catch my own eye in the mirror. I’ve been a bit wary of mirrors since seeing that wraith-woman, but there’s been no sign of her since that first night and I’m feeling reasonably secure here. I’m at home for the weekend and it’s daylight, even if it is a watery winter light. It was probably all a figment of my imagination anyway, I know. If you’re awake and working for twenty hours in a day it’s no wonder that you start dreaming on your feet.

    The bathroom’s tiled and accessorised in black and white and the towels match; my body is the only object in the mirror with any colour to. I look at myself critically, but I’m pretty pleased, let’s face it. I look fit. I’ve kept the stomach bulge and man-boobs at bay. I’ve still got a full head of hair, cut in a style that says prime and not middle-aged. My cock and balls look just fine. I focus on the latter, hanging low in their sling of flesh, a bit struck all of a sudden by the magical potential of their bag of tricks. Whole new lives nestle in those spheres. Million of potential futures. If I was the last man alive I could repopulate the whole country, the whole world, given enough women and enough time to fuck them all. The thought makes Mr Dick swell a little, and I cup my balls encouragingly. ‘Come on Boys,’ I whisper, giving them a little squeeze. ‘You can do it.’

    It’s my day off: we’ve not had sex this morning. And now I want to stroke off, but it’s not allowed. I lift my cock away from my scrotum, feeling the slight pull as the damp skin separates. My cock responds to the touch by filling up a little, bobbing free of gravity. I shift my hips, restless. My scrotum is gathering to wrinkles. I want to jack off. Just solo, with no expectations and no consequences. A nice leisurely wank without the weight of Penny’s need. But I feel guilty; she wouldn’t know of course, but I’d still be letting her down. I stroke the long curve of flesh and feel the swell surge down to the head. Aw hell. Now it really is a semi.

    ‘Richard! I’m off!’

    Wrapping the black towel about my hips, I exit the bathroom. In the hallway Penny is making last-minute adjustments to her makeup in front of the narrow wall mirror. ‘How do I look?’ she asks as I approach.

    She looks great. She always looks great. Even in her winter clothes she’s sexy: she’s wearing burning red lipstick and a trench coat number that just screams of Forties repression and daring, and patterned stockings under that. Well, they might be tights but I can’t help seeing them as stockings. I embrace her from behind, my cock pressing with incorrigible hope into her through layers of towel and clothing. ‘You look lovely.’

    Penny sighs slightly. ‘Save it for later, tiger. I’ve got a train to catch.’ It might be a weekend but she’s got an exhibition to attend and a stall to run.

    I’ll be quick, I want to tell her, but I know better than to argue. It would just upset her schedule. I content myself with a goodbye grope and kiss before seeing her off and locking the front door. Then I look in the mirror, shaking my head at myself with blokish sympathy. I can see the bulge Mr Dick is making under the towel.

    I need a wank. I mean I really need a wank. It makes me feel irritable and bold. I drop the towel on the laminate beech floorboards and strum my cock with slow, defiant strokes.

    "You going to show up then, ghost-girl?"

    Nothing stirs in the reflection behind me. Of course not. It’s broad daylight and I’m safe in my own home. I begin to stroke in earnest. God this is good. My cock is growing stiff and straight and tall, pointing at the glass. My balls are bunching to a fat mass like a fist. I put my hand on the wall and rise up on my toes a little, enjoying the clench of muscles that seems to focus my whole body’s attention at my groin. My eyes are open but I’m not really seeing. Instead I picture Ruth, the grumpy clerical secretary at work. I imagine her walking around as we sit in a focus group circle, circulating the handouts. She wears her blonde hair in a chignon and skirts that are tight on her big thighs: in my fantasy she’s wearing seamed stockings too. She gets to my place, walking inside the circle of chairs, and as she turns from me I stick my foot out and trip her up. Down she goes on her hands and knees, files scattered everywhere, her head ending up nearly in my lap. She’s so surprised she doesn’t even get angry; she just stares at me with her eyes wide and her mouth set in a luscious O. I take advantage of the moment to whip out my thick cock and stuff it between her lips, so deep that for a moment she chokes. I grab her hair and use it to pump her head up and down on my huge length, and after a moment’s resistance she crumbles and begins to suck obediently. Everyone else seated round the circle makes gasps of lecherous appreciation; it’s such a fine sight and we’ve all fantasised about what that big surly mouth could do if put to proper use. They’re getting out their own cocks too; they mean to follow my example and take their own turns once I’ve come. And I’m going to come right now. ‘Take it,’ I grunt, spurting into Ruth’s mouth, down her eager, gobbling throat.

    All over the mirror.

    Afterwards I go into the kitchen and find a jay-cloth and some glass cleaner under the sink. But when I get back into the hall there’s no spunk on the mirror at all. Not a drop. Just the mothprint of a pair of lips, halfway down the glass as if someone had knelt there and kissed the hard surface. It’s almost invisible unless you’re looking for something. I spray the smudge and rub hard with the cloth but it’s no good: the kiss is on the other side of the glass.



Saturday 17 September 2016

Screw you, "Show Don't Tell"

Time for a wee rant.


If you even dip casually into writing sites, you'll find stuff like this all over the internet. "Show Don't Tell!" they insist.


Now, obviously if you are at the stage of your writing career where you are inclined to type something like "A man went into a bar. He ordered a drink. A stranger walked up to him and started an argument..." then this is a poke in the right direction. And God knows that in the romance genre (especially paranormal romance for some reason) there are entire series that could be cut down to pamphlet size if some editor just went in and took out all the expository internal dialogue.

But I want to have a good old tantrum about SDT because I think that as a dogma it's - wait for it - ableist and exclusionary. Specifically, it alienates me as a reader, which pisses me off.

Take a look at these examples:

"Resist the urge to explain"! Because you don't want to make things easy for your reader, for fuckssake.

Tell: Jessica was so scared she just wanted to run away.
Show: Jessica felt the blood drain out of her face. Her breath seemed to freeze in her throat.

Now I'm setting aside the fact that this sort of writing turns everything into melodrama (if you are writing a 100,000 word book where poor ol' Jessica is in regular peril, you are going to be bogged down in sweat springing out on her brow, ice-water running through her veins, lurching stomachs, thumping hearts, etc etc until you have worked through every medical condition/cliche in the lexicon or just given up and started repeating yourself). Melodrama is fine - nay, compulsory - if you are writing romance. But...

1) SDT assumes a high emotional intelligence in the reader.

Personally I am not empathetic. I don't read people's expressions particularly well. I don't "feel" their emotions if I am in conversation with them. I do not notice if they avoid certain words or topics. I do not instinctively know what they expect from me in response to their conversational revelations. How I manage is by extrapolating from the overt evidence, based on experience and what I have been taught by people who put in the actual effort to tell me things overtly.

So as far as I'm concerned, every SDT scene is a procession of characters doing and saying random things, followed by me trying to work out why.


"Tell" clues REALLY HELP ME in subtle situations. If you just show Jessica leaving the room in a cold sweat,  I have to mentally pause and scratch my head and go, "She seems to be very upset or scared, I wonder why," (assuming there is no obvious threat like an axe-murderer or a giant spider or whatever in the room). This is no goddamn fun for me as a reader.

I want to be told; "Jessica felt scared; this man with his creepy smile and his laughter in all the wrong places made her feel like she needed to wash herself with carbolic soap." I need some level of explanation.

2) SDT assumes your reader has the same cultural touchstones as you the writer, which is frankly arrogant. It excludes readers of other cultures.

I can't tell what signals consumer choices send, because I'm not into fashion or consumer culture. I can't interpret "coded Jewishness". I can't tell if one character is subtly, cruelly taking the piss out of another unless it is within my age group and peculiar British sub-culture. Which is pretty fucking tiny subset of fiction. 
This is bad enough as a mainstream British reader of mainstream American authors. God knows what it's like for people trying to read across more disparate cultural gaps. It's why we need emoticons.

Here's Giles Coren reviewing Here I Am (which he loved):
"For me it had everything ... But will it also work for you? Is this a great, great novel, or is its greatness only visible to other deracinated Jewish writers with complex sexual needs and a firstborn son named Sam? I can't tell."

Seriously, I read Brigit Jones and didn't get it. That is not my world. Any book that is "closely observed dissection" of anything might as well be in Greek as far as I'm concerned, because all it does is show, not tell.

Look, telling me that a character wears expensive designer shoes and is pharmacalogically dependent conveys information to me. Casually mentioning her slipping off Jimmy Choos and necking Quaaludes does not. (Well, obviously it does now or else I couldn't use the example, BUT ONLY BECAUSE I LOOKED UP EVERY OTHER NOUN when I read Tales of the City.)


3) What makes SDT worse is combining it with other shitty fashionable writers' "rules":

"You're a big shot now,"  she observed disdainfully. - Hey, it may not be the best sentence in the language but it conveys information to me that I do not have to guess.

But no - writing gurus say we must give up all dialogue tags except Said! You can't growl, stammer, laugh or inquire.
And we must cull our adverbs!
Dialogue must speak for itself!

"You're a big shot now," she said, flipping her hair.

No, this is  just doesn't work. Just tell me what is happening, pleeeeeeease.  FICTION IS NOT A GODDAMN COMPREHENSION EXERCISE SET BY THE AUTHOR TO TEST THE READER'S PERSPICUITY.

For my sake - Show all you like, but please please Tell too...

... she pleaded. :-)

Wednesday 14 September 2016

Picture this ... no, please don't.


Oh the glamour of writing!

It's a good job you can't see me this week, because that meme is almost literally true. We're having a late-summer heatwave here so I am hunched in front of the PC, editing, in a stained dressing gown. I don't manage lunch until 3pm. I don't manage to get dressed or even brush my teeth until 7pm some days.

It's a good job Mr Ashbless is working from home because the sum total of my interaction with the household is to slouch downstairs and stare balefully into the fridge. The dogs are wondering why I don't love them anymore...

Anyways, this is how primary editing of The Valleys of the Earth goes:

  1. 1st draft finished!
  2. Insert scenes and bits thought of since writing "THE END". This takes longer than you think.
  3. Re-read the first book in the trilogy, make notes on everything from eye-colour thru individual character vocabulary.
  4. Lie awake at night worrying that the 2nd book is not actually as good as the 1st, but that I can't see where it all went wrong, because author myopia. 
  5. First edit, with special attention to spelling, pacing and sex-scenes. I've a tendency to be too terse near the end, so will probably need to include more descriptive detail in the final chapter. Discover I've added about 3K words to the text :-O
  6. Re-format to a lean mean Times New Roman machine, getting rid of all the damn tabs 'n' double spaces 'n' shit. Ellipses and hyphens.
  7. Lie awake at night worrying that my hero is too dominant, my heroine too annoying, and that I am heinously guilty of cultural appropriation and will be burnt in effigy by my readers, should I ever find any.
  8. Second edit, preferably read out loud to make sure of sentence flow. EVERY. GODDAMN. WORD
  9. Attempt third edit, realise I've actually gone blind and am no longer capable of reading anything at all.
  10. Give up and, weeping with despair, send book into publisher.
  11. Drink. Await criticism, instructions to rewrite, and the start of line edits

Monday 12 September 2016

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your pleasure!

Since the nights are drawing in and Hallowe'en is on the horizon, I thought I'd showcase some stories from my erotic vampire novel Red Grow the Roses.

Short stories?! Isn't it a novel? Well yes, but it's a mosaic novel, made up of stand-alone shorts in different styles and voices. This excerpt is from Chapter/Story 1: Ten for the Ten Commandments

Blood lust and sexual desire; for vampires the two are inseparable.
 
There are six vampires in the city. Ageless, terrifyingly beautiful and always hungry - not just for blood but for the other pleasures the human body offers. Sadistic chanteuse Estelle; feckless Ben; Roisin, the mirror-ghost; Wakefield, haunted by his own damnation; Naylor, the most feral of them all. And Reynauld is the Good Shepherd, the one who holds them all in check. But his grip on his own humanity is fading, and when Wakefield accidentally kills a woman and Naylor gets the blame, a power-struggle erupts between the city's immortal undead.


Prepare to devour Red Grow the Roses, an explicit vampire erotica novel with plenty of bite.


 ‘You’re up for this, aren’t you?’ Naylor asked, dipping the neck of his bottle into the cleft of her cleavage and rubbing the glass suggestively from swell to swell of her breasts. His lips were parted and shiny. ‘You’re game for it, I can tell.’

     ‘Mm,’ she whimpered, nodding.

     ‘Told you you’d get everything you wanted, love,’ Ben said hoarsely. ‘Everything and more.’ He nuzzled at her ear and took the lobe between his lips, nipping softly.

    ‘Ben...’

    Her head seemed to swim. Naylor had set the beers aside and was stripping off his clothes now. He shed his T-shirt and kicked his trousers off, revealing a slim smooth body, the only visible hair a black nest at his crotch that climbed in a narrow line to his navel. His beautiful smooth cock was already stiffly erect and nodding in the free air: it had a slight curve back toward his stomach and looked almost out of proportion to his delicate frame, so engorged was it. He stroked it like it was a hunting-dog waiting to be unleashed, as he stalked back to her and looked down into her face.

    ‘This is what you were hoping for, wasn’t it doll?’ he asked taking her hand and rubbing it over his cock. It seemed to pulse against her, its sticky mouth kissing her palm. ‘A bit of fun?’

    Sophie nodded.

     ‘It’s going to get a bit messy.’ His gaze lifted to Ben over her shoulder. ‘Clothes off, I guess.’

    They stripped her of everything: the purse hanging from her shoulder, the cherry-coloured dress from the boutique she couldn’t really afford on her wage, the lacy bra she’d bought only last week. All but her high-heeled shoes. Everything was tossed aside in a heap. Her boobs bounced free as Ben whipped the bra off and her nipples stiffened in the cool air of the church. She didn’t seemed to be required to do anything but accept their hands and the liberties they took groping her as they pulled at her clothes, playing with her tits and ass and pussy, pinching slyly between caresses until she squirmed. Ben pushed her into Naylor’s grasp as he wrenched off his own clothes, clearly impatient now. She caught a flash of his body, golden fuzz marching up his stomach and down his legs, before another shove landed her back in his embrace. He caught her wrists and pulled them to the small of her back, guiding her hands to the vertical staff of his cock.

    ‘Hold this,’ he said: ‘That’s right.’ Then his own hands went back round her, holding her under the jaw and around her waist.

    She wasn’t quite sure she liked that. Without the use of her hands to fend anyone off, she felt strangely vulnerable, and she whimpered when Naylor patted her breasts back and forth with stinging force.

    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said; ‘does that hurt? Kiss it better.’ Falling to a crouch he caught her right nipple in his lips and sucked it long and slow and expertly. Pleasure crackled through her nerves, and she squeezed Ben’s cock hard in her hands. But it lasted all too brief a moment before Naylor lifted his mouth away and grinned. She saw his teeth, cruelly pointed fangs, just before he stooped back down on her breast and sank them in.

    It wouldn’t be quite true to say she was surprised, not really. She’d known, after all, from the beginning; she’d just avoided thinking about it. But she tried to scream anyway, except that Ben’s broad hand clamped over her mouth and the sound was trapped in her heaving chest. There was no outlet for the pain, the searing hot cut of his fangs puncturing her skin.

    Then the pain was gone, and something entirely different took its place. Sophie, pinned and thrashing, took a long time to grasp what it was, as it flowed through her right breast like melted sugar fizzing in every capillary - like worms of sparkling fire – like a hundred tiny meteors circling the burning sun of her nipple. She stopped fighting and sagged back against Ben, only half-aware that her hands were still clenched, sweating, around his erect cock, that Naylor was nursing on her tit, his throat working as he swallowed.

    Slowly, Ben slid his grip from her mouth to her lower jaw so that she could breath. She whimpered ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck,’ her panic now swamped in the glorious sensation of the suckling, but horror making her pant.   

    ‘“Oh Fuck No” or “Oh Fuck Yes”?’ murmured Ben. ‘Sounds like an “Oh Fuck Yes” to me, love.’ Lifting her left arm he sank his teeth into the fleshy bulge of her bicep.

    Again – a white flash of pain, a wave of coruscating pleasure.

    Then Naylor stopped feeding and lifted his mouth. There was surprisingly little mess on her breast, only two puckered puncture marks over her enflamed and aching nipple, each filled with a little ruby bead. No blood ran. But when Naylor licked his lips his mouth was red and wet.

    ‘Oh please,’ she moaned. All her will seemed to have faded away as the wild chemistry of their saliva ran riot in her body tissues. Her right breast pulsed with the hungry need for Naylor to latch on again and her left breast ached to join it, even though her stomach recoiled from what it meant that their mouths were that colour.

    ‘You like that?’ he asked with a mocking scarlet smile.

    ‘It feels ... nice,’ she whispered. She felt drunk with shock and her voice broke on the last word into a strange giggle she had no control over.

    ‘You do like it, don’t you?’ He pressed against her, grinning. ‘Naughty girl.’ His fingers slipped up between her thighs and paddled in the ooze of her sex juices. ‘Dirty fucking little girl.
’     
    ‘Look at this,’ chuckled Ben, brushing her turgid right nipple with his thumb; it was as swollen as if it’d been stung by a bee, and so sensitive that she gasped. ‘Just bursting with juicy goodness, aren’t you love?’

    ‘Want another kiss, don’t you?’ Naylor lapped teasingly at her breast. ‘Let’s try something a bit different, heh?’ Then he sat back on his heels, took her thighs in his hands and spread them, lifting one to drape over his shoulder. He and Ben took her weight easily, as she was pulled onto the kneeling man’s mouth and he buried his face in her crotch.

    ‘Oh!’ she wailed reflexively, as his tongue broke the split of her sex, as he lapped and sucked at the juices welling there. She tried half-heartedly to struggle but her body wasn’t co-operating, and even if it had the two men were far too strong. For a long moment the sensation of his mouth was just one of simple pleasure and she stopped twisting altogether. That was when he bit down, and his fangs pierced the mound of her pubis either side of her clit. She spasmed once - and that was the last time, the last vestige of any resistance that night.



Saturday 10 September 2016

The Open-Arse Tree

Y'all know how fond I am of trees. Well here's my new favourite: the Open-Arse.

Can you see where it got its name? Picture from Wikipedia

Technically it's the Medlar (Mespilus germanica), which ticks every box for being a European native with a long British history, a  really weird fruit tree, and possessing a filthy folklore. "Open-arse" was its original folk name.

It was really common and really popular back in the Middle Ages, as medlar fruits were some of the few available to consume during winter. That's because you can eat them only after they've started to decay.

Yummy! (pic from Wikipedia)
They'll rot on the branches, after the first frost (it's called "bletting") or you can store them in straw and let them rot at their leisure.

Due to its strange appearance and pungent squishiness, medlar fruit was associated with the female genitals - and also became a metaphor for premature decay, as in the Prologue of Chaucer's The Reeve's Tale:

But if I fare as dooth an open-ers --
That ilke fruyt is ever lenger the wers,
Til it be roten in mullok or in stree.
We olde men, I drede, so fare we:
Til we be roten, kan we nat be rype
                   
(Unless I fare as does the fruit of the medlar --
That same fruit continually grows worse,  
Until it is rotten in rubbish or in straw.
We old men, I fear, fare like that:
Until we are rotten, we can not be ripe)

Shakespeare uses the fruit's repulsive/bawdy connotation:

 Now will he sit under a medlar tree,
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.
O Romeo, that she were, O that she were
An open-arse and thou a pop'rin pear!  
(Romeo and Juliet)


By his time the word "Medlar" had become specifically a symbol and slang term for a prostitute: sweet and desirable but 'rotten on the inside' and old before her time. 
Lucio.   I was once before him for getting a wench with child.
Duke.   Did you such a thing?
Lucio.   Yes, marry, did I; but I was fain to forswear it: they would else have married me to the rotten medlar.
(Measure for Measure)

The misogyny reaches its succinct apex in The Honest Whore by Thomas Dekker:

"Women are like medlars, no sooner ripe but rotten"


I feel an overpowering urge to plant some :-)

Wednesday 7 September 2016

Jennifer is 5!


Sci-Fi kinkster and high queen of the bunnies Jennifer Denys is celebrating her 5th birthday as an author of erotic romance" - with a special post about the smutwriters she's met, carshared with and bedded(!).

I'm up there, first on the list!
It's an amazing, cool feeling to have helped inspire someone to start their own writing career. Damnit, I should have demanded a cut!

There's also a daily prize competition for blogreaders all this week, so GO FOR IT!

Monday 5 September 2016

Blue Monday: Ian Smith guests

Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment. Today we have a bonus mini-interview with today's guest Ian Smith too!

He brought us an excerpt from his first book in the Merely Players erotic romance series a while back, and now the second,
The King's Captain, is out and available to buy. Ian says: "At the end of the first story, Knights Errant, Paul and Hayley become lovers. The storyline is continued in The King’s Captain, which I tried to make as stand-alone as possible."




Where did the idea for the Merely Players series come from?

It's a messy sort of mix of ideas! I started with a few ideas for flash fiction stories involving two lovers working together on TV shows. I developed these ideas into some "supporting cast" characters in a draft novel, and then used one of the scenes they filmed as a setting for part of the story.

I'm sure I wouldn't know where to start writing this series! - Did it involve much research?


I'd seen a couple of jousting shows and thought I could plausibly use a team in my story. I also had a day's training with a stunt group as a "Red Letter Day", doing jousting and combat. I've been riding for years, which is why I wanted his horse to have a real personality. All the TV stuff is purely from my imagination, at least partly inspired by  the filming techniques used in 24 Hours in A&E, Air Ambulance and some of the emergency service TV series. A lot of the TV shows they'll work on are pretty obviously based on hit films and shows, but I thought making them for a family audience (eg 6pm at the weekend) would allow lots of leeway and fun.

What do you have in mind for your next writing project?


My next publication will be a story in an anthology called “Love and Lust in Space”. This is being edited by Jennifer Denys and will be published by Sexy Little Pages.

I’ve finished the first draft of the third novella in the “Merely Players” series, which now needs revision. The next one I send to my publishers will almost certainly be a “spin-off” novel about Paul’s friends Mark and Maggie, currently being tweaked. I’ve got ideas for three more novellas in this series and perhaps another spin-off. And there are three other substantial ideas rattling around in my mind, nagging me to write them. I keep getting ideas, most of which I develop as a piece of flash fiction in the hope they give me a memory jog some other day.


Have you ever had a character just “do their own thing?” 


Yes, and it was a weird feeling when it happened! I was working on a draft novel and an incident occured to me, which seemed perfectly logical and plausible, but how to develop from that stumped me for ages. I’ve got some ideas now, and can use this incident as a source of tension in the relationship between the two characters in the second part of the story.


What’s your writer’s routine? Are you a plotter or do you just write and see where it goes?

I write as and when I can find time and the mental energy. It tends to be weekends at the moment, with a couple of hours on the odd weekday evening. I’ve always had a vague idea of the overall storyline, but for some reason I never want to write this out. I’ve almost always had some key scenes in mind, and have written some of these first to provide me with “way-markers”.

Now here's the excerpt:




Paul is Hayley's lover and now her leading man. But acting and portraying a hero on a period TV show takes far more than a suit of armour. He's totally out of his depth, personally and professionally.

Help arrives with dramatic lessons in leadership and courage, when strange events put him and his friends in harm's way.

Hayley's happy when her best friend Becky books hotel rooms with a bed big enough for three, which confuses Paul. Sorting out their relationships is even scarier than acting, jousting, and stunt fighting in front of the camera.

Life doesn't imitate art. Life shoulders art out of the way. Discovering a secret threatens Paul's trust in Hayley and Becky, and forces him to face his doubts and fears. He must decide if it's braver to walk away, or ask for honest answers. Even if they may break his heart.


I slid my hands under her tee shirt and managed to undo her bra fairly slickly. Well, for me. She sat up, wriggled, and somehow removed her bra through one sleeve without lifting her top. She threw the bra aside, took my hands and placed them on her breasts. Through her soft cotton top, they felt lovely in my hands and her nipples were firm little buds. She looked down at me with something approaching open lust as I fondled her breasts. And she shifted her hips around, teasing my constrained erection.

"Can't decide whether I want to take you, or have you take me," she murmured.

"Suppose I get all overenthusiastic? You know, forceful and pushy."

She grinned at me. "You? Mister gentle and thoughtful?"

I pulled her down onto me and rolled us over so I was on top. I straddled her thighs and pinned her hands on either side of her head. "So? Who says I can't be thoughtfully pushy, too?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Prove it, big boy."

I pulled her arms up and held both her wrists with one hand, then tugged her tee shirt up. She wriggled to help me pull it over her head, but I left her arms in it, not quite trapped, but restricted. While she giggled and struggled with that, I unfastened her jeans and tugged them down to the top of her panties, then I rolled to one side and pulled her clothing down as far as I could.

"You're cheating," she grumbled, throwing her tee shirt to the floor.

"How am I cheating?"

"I can't put up a decent fight, but I want you be all forceful and overpower me. And I'm half-naked but you're still fully dressed."

"Well, let's sort that out." I jumped up and stripped quickly.

Hayley got into her bed and grabbed the duvet to stop me getting in with her. But she didn't try all that hard, and squealed when I won and threw the duvet back. We cuddled and giggled, then she stroked my face tenderly.

"Paul, I know you're very conscious of being a lot bigger and stronger than me, and I love it that you try to be gentle. And you're probably trying to avoid me feeling too dominated. But sometimes I want you to be a bit rougher. Like we were in that feed room last night. I know you won't hurt me and if I want to give in to you, that's not you dominating me." She kissed me gently and ran her fingers through my hair, all the way from my forehead to where it was spread across my shoulders. "Sometimes, I just want to feel that you're completely hugging me, every little bit of me."

I took both her hands in one of mine, stretched her arms up above her head and kissed her slowly and deeply. "Yellow and red, okay?"

She nodded and smiled shyly.

I rolled her onto her tummy, eased her legs apart and knelt between them. Once I'd got myself balanced, I slid a fingertip along the cleft of her pussy, which immediately opened for me. She was deliciously hot, slick, and very tempting. I teased her entrance and spread her wetness over her lips until I thought she was really ready. Then I moved and stroked her pussy with the tip of my cock. She gasped quietly and raised her hips. I took the hint and slid into her. She was so wet and open that I filled her after a couple of gentle thrusts. I screwed her slowly, pulling as far back as I could each time, then sliding as deep into her as I could.

She twisted her head and kissed me roughly. Her eyes were bright with desire and mischief. "Go on, have me."

I went faster, but still pulled almost out before sliding back deep into her. Hayley closed her eyes and relaxed completely. She made a sound like a cross between a gasp and a moan each time I slid into her.
I remembered her comment about being hugged completely and had an idea. I stopped for a few seconds and put my legs outside hers. She got the idea and moved her legs together. My cock still slid in and out easily, with my balls touching her thighs each time I thrust into her. She arched her hips up off the bed, making it easier for me to pump in and out of her. Her gasping got louder and we soon had a film of sweat over us. She climaxed loudly and suddenly, almost pulling me over the edge with her.

"You okay?" I murmured.

"Green, go for it." She gasped. "Don't stop now."

I let my self-control go. My world was entirely centred around my cock sliding into the wet, soft core of the lithe, firm body beneath mine. Her gasps grew louder and she slipped her hands out of my grasp, pressing them on the bed. She pushed back against my thrusts. "Green, green, green," she whispered, then her whole body tensed as she found another climax. That one was too much for me, and I released inside her, pulse after pulse of hot need washed through my cock to fill her.

We rolled onto one side and snuggled together; hot, sweaty, breathless and bathed in the unmistakable aroma of vigorous sex.

Hayley stroked the arm I had around her tummy. "That was rather fun," she murmured.

"Bloody amazing," I said. "Remind me to let go and be rough more often."

She chuckled. "Only when it's the right moment. Your tender, gentle approach is pretty bloody mind-blowing, too."

She rolled onto her back and turned her face towards mine. Our noses were only millimetres apart. "And I know exactly where my g-spot is now."

"Oh?"

She nodded. "I felt it every single time you slid into me. And it was heavenly." She grinned and kissed me. "Thank you."

"Thank you," I said.

"No, thank you." She giggled, then put her fingers over my mouth. "Let me have the last word. You know it's less painful that way."

I rolled onto my back and stretched my legs, which meant my feet dangled over the end of the mattress. But at least the room was warm.

She snuggled up against me, enveloped by my arms. My woman. It's so good to know that feeling again.

Buy The King's Captain at:

Saturday 3 September 2016

Don't say a word


... but I've been reading my copy of Silence is Golden to the new dog...

She says "Contemporary kink-inspired erotica at its best. Can I have that dog treat now?" ;-)

Thursday 1 September 2016

The last battle

Gustave Dore, illustration for Paradise Lost

FINAL CHAPTER!!!

I WILL FINISH "THE VALLEYS OF THE EARTH" THIS WEEK

You are going to hate me ...
... cliffhanger ending